Download Samantha Brown

Samantha Brown
Colorado, Democrat
Briarcliff High School
Committee on Environment and Public Works
Disaster Preparedness
Recently, more than ever, the United States government has proven to be
insufficient when it comes to disaster prevention, preparedness, and recovery. Several
catastrophes have taken place throughout the past years that have shown the
government’s inadequacy to act fast and effectively in response to disaster. The federal
government has transferred the responsibility of disaster mitigation, preparedness,
response, and recovery to several committees within the government several times.
Unfortunately, still no team has provided our country with the proper disaster prevention,
preparedness, and recovery plan it needs.
Natural disasters are avoidable to only a slight extent – the prevention of climate
change. More earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and other severe natural disasters are
predicted to occur as a result of climate change. If our country does all it can to put an
end to global warming, the risks of these disasters occurring will decrease. However,
even when climate change is not an issue, our world still faces the threat of natural
disasters. The purpose of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security was that
it would define responsibilities for national emergency preparedness. However, the
DHS’s response to Hurricane Katrina was extremely ineffective. The response to
Hurricane Andrew was also considered a governmental failure. It is practical that the
federal government remains responsible for disaster preparedness and recovery; however,
they need to start doing a better job of disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, and
recovery. Legislation needs to be composed that will actually be effective and even more
importantly, enforced.
The government should be held responsible for preparing for disaster and the
recovery that comes after disaster; however the general public should also be responsible
for their own safety. Many citizens just assume that their surrounding environment is
safe. It is a necessary that the public is informed of areas that pose hazardous risks. State
governments in disaster-prone areas should take on the task of informing their citizens of
the possible risk of natural disasters within that area. It should then be the responsibility
of the individual to take the information and do what is necessary in order to protect his
or herself.
The United States economy is in one of its worst states ever. Prevention policies
would push our economy much further into debt than it already it is. However, the cost
of repairing damages from disasters exceeds the cost of prevention reforms significantly.
It would have caused somewhere from four billion to thirty billion dollars to strengthen
the levee system in New Orleans. The cost of the damages from Hurricane Katrina
amounted to two hundred billion dollars. Although spending excessive amounts of
money to prepare for disasters that have an extremely low probability of occurring is
risky, it is better to be safe than sorry.
The federal government also has not done its job improving faulty infrastructure.
Not only can flawed infrastructure escalate the damages of natural disasters, but it can
also cause them. The government needs to drastically increase its responsibility
regarding natural disasters. The government took on the task of dealing with disaster
prevention, preparedness, and recovery, but has failed to deal with these issues in an
efficient way. The United States federal government needs to place natural disasters in
the category of its primary concerns in order to properly prepare the country and to be
able to redeem the U.S. after a natural disaster.